Richmond Dodges a Bullet As Smaller Crowd of Extremists Protest

The city of Richmond and the Commonwealth of Virginia dodge a bullet - literally and figuratively - as a much smaller than predicted crowd of gun extremist protesters - many from out side of Virginia - descended on the Virginia Capitol in an effort to intimidate members of the General Assembly.  Promoters had raved about 100,000 pro-gun nuts attending the rally, but police estimates place the crowd at a little over 20% of that number.  Thankfully, no violence occurred, probably largely due to the preemptive action of Governor Northam in banning guns from the Capitol grounds.  Plus, one needs to keep in mind that those who descended on Richmond are an aberration and/or outsiders given that recent polls confirm that the vast majority of Virginians want the gun control measures now before the General Assembly.  As the a column in the Washington Post aptly notes, what today's gun rally really demonstrated was the fear (and I would argue sexual inadequacy) that motivates the attendees who, based on their looks, my late New Orleans southern belle grandmother would have described as "white trash" - the lowest of the low in her book.  Fear of a loss of white privilege.  Fear of a changing world and society. Fear of a loss of white male dominance. They rant about the Second Amendment, but beneath that, something is going on that suggests that something is seriously wrong with these protesters. Here are highlights from the Post column:

Y'all, it smelled like fear out here in Virginia.

Scores of men — plus a handful of women — dressed up in battle rattle and draped themselves with assault weapons, long guns and handguns on Monday. They strapped hunting knives to their thighs and wore body armor and body cameras on their chests, shoulders and helmets. To a rally. A peaceful rally. On city streets in a quiet state capital on a holiday weekend.

That’s a uniform of fear, right there.

Fear of having to pass a background check if they want to buy a gun from a private individual?  Fear of not being able to buy more than one handgun every month?

Fear of not being able to carry an AR-15 across your chest to a county fair that doesn’t want your weapon aboard the Tilt-a-Whirl?

Fear of getting help taking a gun away from your suicidal son?

Because those are all the restrictions on guns that the Virginia [Senate]  passed last week.
The outsized turnout, vigor and rancor in Richmond on Monday — thousands of demonstrators filled the Capitol grounds and surrounding streets — is a reaction based on fear, not fact.

And the fear is all about a loss of power.

“It happened like that,” a man dressed in full camo with a handgun strapped to his hip told his friend, snapping his finger. “We were good for years, then the left took over and they’re going to take our guns away. Virginia is the home of the NRA. They want to run them out, too.”

Most law-abiding, regular old Virginians could still have a weapon — many weapons, even — under the common-sense legislation that the new Democratic majority in Richmond is passing.

Huge assault weapons strapped across chests and backs knocked against each other in the port-a-potty lines. Some walked in a masked phalanx, bookended by German shepherds.
One group pushed through crowds in a conga line of camo and Carhartt, holding on to each other as they muscled through a crush of people. “Racist, white supremacists coming through,” one line leader bellowed, laughing, like everyone should know he really isn’t racist.

All of the men I talked to were also solidly opposed to “red-flag laws,” which allow a concerned family member or the police to ask for the temporary removal of weapons from someone who may be dangerous to themselves or others.

“I can just tell the cops that a guy I hate is dangerous, and they’ll go take all his guns. It can happen to me,” one guy told me.

Nope. That may be what he fears. But the red-flag law requires a state court to be petitioned and a judge to weigh in on whether taking the gun is appropriate.

Let me spell it out: The people who lobby for red-flag laws are usually those who lost a loved one to suicide.

Thirty percent of gun deaths in Virginia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are homicides.

A much larger percentage — 67 percent of all gun deaths in the state — are suicides.

The suicide-by-gun rate — about two a day in Virginia — takes primarily rural, white males over the age of 45, according to numbers compiled by America’s Health Rankings. And veterans are 1.5 times as likely to take their lives in Virginia.

That almost perfectly describes the demographic at the gun rally in Richmond.

Think about it, guys. The biggest thing you have to fear, when it comes to guns, is yourselves, actually.

Richmond Braces for Invasion of Extremists As Trump Fans Flames

Members of a "Lightfoot Militia" - these are
NOT sportsmen or those focused on self-defense.

The husband and I have a number of friends in Richmond, know a number of members of the Virginia General Assembly, and are friends with Governor Northam and the First Lady of Virginia.  It is with horror that we watch that city braces for a possible invasion by some of the ugliest elements in America.  A piece at NBC News looks at the fear gripping Richmond where businesses will be closed and some are staying in other parts of the city away from the Capitol area. Making maters worse, Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer on this blog, is fanning the flames of hate on the right and then suggesting Republicans will win in Virginia in 2020, suggesting just how delusional Trump is - he is widely hated in Virginia and, if Richmond sees violence tomorrow, rest assured the so-called urban crescent of Virginia will vote even more heavily Democrat.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at Trump's dangerous and irresponsible behavior:

A tweet from President Donald Trump Friday, one of the sort that Speaker Nancy Pelosi might categorize as “crazy,” drew sharp criticism for seeming to fan the flames of unrest ahead of a gun-rights rally in Richmond, Virginia.

Trump’s social-media eruption warns Virginians that their 2nd Amendment rights are “under attack,” and offers a sarcastic “thank you” to Virginia Democrats who will “take your guns away.”

Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund called Trump’s comment “irresponsible and utterly, truly unconscionable.”
 After the deadly events in nearby Charlottesville during the “unite the right” rally in 2017, [Trump] the president was sharply criticized for blaming violence on “both sides.”

Trump seemingly wants violence so he can use further fear mongering with his hideous base of support that increasingly seems to consist of outright racists, white supremacists and evangelical "Christians" (who in general are also racists/white supremacists in my view having followed right wing  "Christian" organization for over 20 years)

As for some of the types of out of state extremists on their way to Richmond, the Washington Post has more information.  Belatedly, Republicans who for years have given a wink and a nod to some of the dangerous extremists in the party base seem to have awoken to the danger these people pose to the public.  Here are artile highlights:

RICHMOND — The convoys and militias are coming, if social media posts are to be believed, headed to Virginia's capital to take a stand for gun rights — or, in the words of some, to fan the flames of a civil war.

“I’ll be rolling into town early. I can’t give you my exact time for security reasons,” said Christian Yingling, head of the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia and a leader at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017.

“I organized a convoy, places we can meet up and drive up together. I’ll be leading it,” said Tammy Lee, a militia activist in Oklahoma.

Both Lee and Yingling were members of groups that signed consent decrees never to return to Charlottesville while armed, part of a lawsuit settlement over the violence there. But there is no restriction against coming to Richmond.

Thousands will join them, they say, for a rally Monday on Capitol Square to protest plans by the new Democratic majority in the General Assembly to pass gun-control laws. State and federal officials were preparing for a volatile mix of weapons, passions and anti-government fervor. Central Richmond was braced for road closures and extensive police presence.

The Federal Aviation Administration has issued temporary flight restrictions for Richmond airspace, making it illegal to fly planes or drones above the city on Monday. Northam has said officials are concerned about threats from weaponized drones.

The pro-gun rally is always the most visible event, but this year it has virtually wiped out everything else. The Virginia Citizens Defense League has appealed for 10,000 supporters to show up unarmed to fill Capitol Square and asked several times that many stand outside with weapons.

One of Richmond’s staunchest gun rights Republicans, who needled Northam over the ban earlier in the week, closed ranks with the governor after a closed-door briefing on the security threats Friday.

“Any group that comes to Richmond to spread white supremacist garbage, or any other form of hate, violence, or civil unrest isn’t welcome here,” House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) said in a written statement Saturday. “While we and our Democratic colleagues may have differences, we are all Virginians and we will stand united in opposition to any threats of violence or civil unrest from any quarter.”

Gilbert declined to discuss the content of the briefing, but his statement referred to efforts to “infuse” the event with a “twisted or extreme worldview.”

National militia and extremist groups have mobilized, with some making threats against elected officials. Many promise to use Virginia as the place to take a stand against what they see as a rising tide of anti-gun sentiment, invoking language of insurrection and civil war.

Lee, the convoy leader from Oklahoma, has promoted the Richmond rally in Facebook live videos. “I can absolutely not wait,” she said in one. “This may possibly be the first time that almost the entire patriot movement is there.”

But in a video posted Friday, she also expressed dread. “If you’re not apprehensive about going to this event, then I would worry about you and your mental state and your thought process,” she said.

In an interview, Lee said the convoy would kick off in Oklahoma on Saturday morning and swing through 10 states before its scheduled arrival in Richmond on Sunday afternoon. She declined to say how many vehicles or people would be involved.
In a recent video, she indicated that the gun rights movement was fractured over whether the out-of-state militias would help or hinder their cause in Richmond.

“While some don’t want outsiders coming in, it’s too late for that,” she said. “There are so many people woke to what’s happening … that I don’t think you could keep people away if you wanted to.”

I hope sane Virginians are watching and will punish Republicans further at the polls come November, 2020.

What to Know About the Gun Rally at the Virginia Capitol

Thankfully, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld Governor Ralph Northam's executive order banning all guns from the Virginia Capitol grounds on Monday when gun fanatics and likely unsavory and dangerous "militia" members will descend on Richmond from across the country to try to intimidate legislators into not passing gun control legislation that a majority of Virginians want - perhaps even more now that they have seen the extremism of the gun lobby.  With the FBI's arrest of now seven (7) white supremacist extremists who hoped to ignite a race war at the Capitol, the wisdom of Northam's preemptive strike with his executive order is all the more clear.  As for the whining of the gun nuts, there is no reason they cannot lobby legislators without being armed in what can only be viewed as an attempt at threats and intimidation.  The New York Times has a good overview of what has happened and what is known about some of the bad actors headed to Richmond at the invitation of the misnamed Virginia Citizens Defense League (which to me looks more like a group of all white vigilantes based on photos of the group's meetings) and strongly suggests a peaceful rally was perhaps never the goal. Add to this the reality that most "gun rights" groups receive funding from gun manufacturers who want to maximize sales regardless of the death and mayhem that results and it becomes clear that this gun nuts do not speak for the majority of Virginians.   Here are article highlights:

The rally is being hosted by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a prominent Second Amendment group that typically holds an annual “Lobby Day” to meet with lawmakers. The group is organizing charter buses, car pools and a sushi dinner the night before the rally in anticipation of what it is calling “the most important Lobby Day Rally that we have ever had.” 

[T]he rally has drawn the attention of militia groups from as far away as Nevada and Oklahoma, including those [hate groups] tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.

Others vowing to attend include individuals associated with the Light Foot Militia, some of whom were banned from Charlottesville after the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, which ended in the death of a counterprotester. Richard B. Spencer, a prominent white nationalist who is among 24 defendants in a lawsuit over the rally in Charlottesville, also said he might attend.

Experts on extremism believe the groups want to co-opt the rally in an effort to fuel a race war. For example, extremists are calling Monday’s rally the “boogaloo,” which in the language of white supremacists is an event that will accelerate such a war.

It remains unclear who will actually arrive in Richmond, but it’s possible pre-emptive moves by the authorities could deter some who had vowed to attend.

The authorities on Thursday announced the arrests of three men linked to the Base, an extremist group being tracked by the F.B.I. The three men had obtained weapons and discussed participating in the Richmond rally and were charged with various federal crimes in Maryland, the authorities said.

On Friday, law enforcement announced the arrest of at least four other men also tied to the Base, in separate plots.

The Base is a white extremist, antigovernment group that aims to establish a white “ethno-state.”

The F.B.I. has grown increasingly concerned about the Base as it has worked to recruit more people. The group encourages the onset of anarchy, according to the Counter Extremism Project, an organization that tracks far-right extremists. Experts say that its founder, an American, appears to be living in Russia.

Former law enforcement officials say the Base and a similar group known as Atomwaffen have become priorities for the F.B.I.

In November, the F.B.I. arrested Richard Tobin, a young man in New Jersey, who was accused of recruiting on behalf of the Base and of supporting violence, including the killing of black people with a machete.

In his declaration, Mr. Northam cited the eruption in Charlottesville three years ago as an example of “what can happen when peaceful demonstrations are hijacked by those who come into the Commonwealth and do not value the importance of peaceful assembly.” He added: “We must take all precautions to prevent that from ever happening again.”

White Nationalist Terror - Is the Worst Is Yet to Come?

With messaging coming out of the White House indicating that racism and white nationalism involves "fine people" and social media websites failing to ban racists and misogynistic messaging, it is hard to not believe that things are going to get far worse in America - two countries advised citizens to avoid travel to the USA - before, hopefully, Trump and the GOP lose power and the pendulum will begin to swing back towards normalcy.  A piece at The Atlantic that interviews a former white nationalist adds to concerns that things may well get worse in the near term. That being the case, all that most of us can do is be sure to vote Republicans - especially Trump in 2020 - out of office and demand that social media sites take action to block hate motivated white nationalist propaganda.  Here are highlights from The Atlantic piece: 

It’s going to get worse. That’s the warning of a former violent extremist, Christian Picciolini, who joined a neo-Nazi movement 30 years ago and now tries to get people out of them. White-supremacist terrorists—the ones who have left dozens dead in attacks in Pittsburgh, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas, in recent months—aren’t just trying to outdo one another, he told us. They’re trying to outdo Timothy McVeigh, the anti-government terrorist who blew up an Oklahoma City federal building and killed more than 100 people in 1995—the worst terrorist attack in the United States before September 11, 2001.

On Saturday morning in El Paso, a gunman shot and killed 22 people, including children, at a Walmart. The store was crowded for back-to-school-shopping season. The victims included a high-school student, an elementary-school teacher, and a couple carrying their infant son, who survived. And the shooter, according to an online manifesto [that quoted Trump] authorities attributed to the suspect, saw himself fighting a “Hispanic invasion” as he gunned them down.

That shooting, along with another one hours later, in which an attacker killed nine people over 30 seconds in Dayton, Ohio, renewed the clamor for gun-control laws that has become a grim ritual after such events. But Picciolini said that even if the U.S. could get a handle on its gun problem, terrorists can always find other ways.

“I have to ask myself, Do we have white-nationalist airline pilots?” Picciolini said. “There have to be. I knew people in powerful positions, in politics, in law enforcement, who were secretly white nationalists. I think we’d be stupid and selfish to think that we don’t have those in the truck-driving industry.” Picciolini . . . . spoke with us yesterday morning about the mainstreaming of white nationalism, what it takes to de-radicalize far-right extremists, and why the problem is metastasizing.   . .  . this whole idea of the “Great Replacement,” of “white genocide,” the belief that immigrants are going to overwhelm the white race. That, frankly, is a crock of shit. But we see things in the news that seem to kind of stand behind these notions—that border facilities are overwhelmed. Even though it’s not really a threat to anyone’s race. Migration has been happening for centuries, and we’re still here. Nations change over centuries, borders have been different. But that’s all the language white supremacists have been using for decades. It’s no longer a lone-wolf-type situation, which is something we were pushing in the ’80s and ’90s. The ideology then was that there were no leaders, there was no centralized movement, individuals were empowered to act on their own. But the internet has really solidified this movement globally through all these forums online; they’re connected in the virtual world in ways that we often can’t be in the real world. I would say that the threat of a transnational, global white-supremacist terrorist movement is spreading.

It's Time to Admit the USA Has a White Nationalist Terrorist Problem

I can't wrap my head around what level of hate motivates one to murder innocent people that one does even know and who have never done any direct harm to you merely because they have a different skin color or speak a different language.  Yet such hatred seems to be growing in America and the occupant of the White House continues to give a knowing nod to such hatred even as he on occasion makes disingenuous condemnation of violence.  Such is white nationalism in America today.  And making matters worse is law enforcement's failure to treat white national extremists with the same level of concern and surveillance as that given to Islamic terrorism even though white nationalists have killed more Americans than Islamic terrorist since 9-11.   Add to this toxic mix the fact that America's insane gun laws allow such murderers to legally buy guns with which to inflict their carnage (both shooters in El Paso and Dayton appear to have legally purchased their weapons).  An editorial in the New York Times looks at the problem over taking America that literally leaves no one safe.  As the piece notes, you are either against such violence or not and, I would add, if you are a Trump supporter, at a minimum, you tacitly support it).  Here are highlights:

If one of the perpetrators of this weekend’s two mass shootings had adhered to the ideology of radical Islam, the resources of the American government and its international allies would mobilize without delay.

The awesome power of the state would work tirelessly to deny future terrorists access to weaponry, money and forums to spread their ideology. The movement would be infiltrated by spies and informants. Its financiers would face sanctions. Places of congregation would be surveilled. Those who gave aid or comfort to terrorists would be prosecuted. Programs would be established to de-radicalize former adherents.

No American would settle for “thoughts and prayers” as a counterterrorism strategy. No American would accept laying the blame for such an attack on video games, like the Texas lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, did in an interview on Sunday when discussing the mass shooting in El Paso that took 20 lives and left 27 people wounded.

Even a casual observer today can figure out what is going on. The world, and the West in particular, has a serious white nationalist terrorist problem that has been ignored or excused for far too long. As President George W. Bush declared in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, we must be a country “awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution.”

There are serious questions about how the United States has approached Islamic extremism, but if even a degree of that vigilance and unity of effort was put toward white nationalism, we’d be safer.

White nationalist terror attacks are local, but the ideology is global. On Saturday, a terrorist who, according to a federal law enforcement official, wrote that he feared a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” was replacing white Americans opened fire in a Walmart in El Paso. In a manifesto, the gunman wrote that he drew some inspiration from the white nationalist terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, that left 51 people dead. The F.B.I. is investigating the El Paso mass shooting as a possible act of domestic terrorism. The motive behind another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, is under investigation.

In April, another terrorist who opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, Calif., echoed the words of the Christchurch suspect, too, and appeared to draw inspiration from a massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last fall.

An investigation by The Times earlier this year found that “at least a third of white extremist killers since 2011 were inspired by others who perpetrated similar attacks, professed a reverence for them or showed an interest in their tactics.” White supremacy, in other words, is a violent, interconnected transnational ideology. Its adherents are gathering in anonymous, online forums to spread their ideas, plotting attacks and cheering on acts of terrorism. Online communities like 4chan and 8chan have become hotbeds of white nationalist activity. Anonymous users flood the site’s “politics” board with racist, sexist and homophobic content designed to spread across the web. Users share old fascist fiction, Nazi propaganda and pseudoscientific texts about race and I.Q. and replacement theory, geared to radicalize their peers.

These communities aren’t new. . . . Yet, in recent months, conversations in one anonymous 8chan forum in particular have evolved. They increasingly focus on carrying out acts of white nationalist terror. . . . Posts actively incentivize the darkest impulses of the most dangerous users. In May, an anonymous user posted a screed on “Target Selection,” providing a blueprint on how to increase the body count during mass shootings. The community celebrates and compares the number of casualties from shooting to shooting. . . .

Technology companies, too, appear unwilling to treat white nationalist terror online the way they have dealt with the online spread of radical Islamic terror groups, such as the Islamic State. Companies like Facebook and Twitter took bold action to remove tens of millions of pieces of ISIS and Al Qaeda propaganda and accounts between 2014 and 2018. Similar standards have not been applied to white nationalists, perhaps because, as a 2018 report from researcher J.M. Berger, who specializes in online extremism, notes, “The task of crafting a response to the alt-right is considerably more complex and fraught with land mines, largely as a result of the movement’s inherently political nature and its proximity to political power.”

While its modern roots predate the Trump administration by many decades, white nationalism has attained a new mainstream legitimacy during Mr. Trump’s time in office.

“You will not replace us,” white nationalists proudly chanted at Charlottesville in 2017. (Mr. Trump himself proclaimed that there were “fine people” on both sides of that deadly event.)

In May, bemoaning an “invasion” of immigrants, Mr. Trump asked how immigrants could be stopped during a rally in Florida. “Shoot them,” someone in the crowd yelled. Mr. Trump gave a smirk and said, “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff,” as the crowd exploded in ghoulish laughter.

Far more Americans have died at the hands of domestic terrorists than at the hands of Islamic extremists since 2001, according to the F.B.I. The agency’s resources, however, are still overwhelmingly weighted toward thwarting international terrorism.

Moderate members of the political right must do more to condemn white nationalists, even if the president condemns them from one side of his mouth and extols ethnonationalism from the other.

Most importantly, American law enforcement needs to target white nationalists with the same zeal that they have targeted radical Islamic terrorists. Ensuring the security of the homeland demands it.

There can be no middle ground when it comes to white nationalism and the terrorism it inspires. You’re either for it or against it.

Stirred by Trump Right Wing Militia Groups Head to Border

It what is a recipe for disaster, right wing militia groups - many filled with white supremacists and white nationalists - are heading to the U.S./Mexico border, answering the racist call of Der Trumpenführer who previously stated he would have U.S. military troops fire on unarmed refugees  if they wielded rocks. One can only hope that no one loses their life as a result of the dishonest, hysteria invoking rhetoric of the foul occupant of the White House.  Many landowners and U.S. military officials do not want the militias along the border and fear thefts of military gear by militia extremists, damage to private property and the endangerment of both locals and refugees.  Sadly, it is yet another example of the normalization of the reprehensible being pushed by the Trump/Pence regime. The Washington Post looks at the dangerous phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

Gun-carrying civilian groups and border vigilantes have heard a call to arms in President Trump’s warnings about threats to American security posed by caravans of Central American migrants moving through Mexico. They’re packing coolers and tents, oiling rifles and tuning up aerial drones, with plans to form caravans of their own and trail American troops to the border.

McGauley and others have been roused by [Trump’s] the president’s call to restore order and defend the country against what Trump has called “an invasion,” as thousands of Central American migrants advance slowly through southern Mexico toward the U.S. border. Trump has insisted [without any evidence] that “unknown Middle Easterners,” “very tough fighters,” and large numbers of violent criminals are traveling among the women, children and families heading north on foot.

McGauley said. “My phone’s been ringing nonstop for the last seven days. You got other militias, and husbands and wives, people coming from Oregon, Indiana. We’ve even got two from Canada.”  Asked whether his group planned to deploy with weapons, McGauley laughed. “This is Texas, man,” he said.

And yet, the prospect of armed vigilantes showing up beside thousands of U.S. troops — along with Border Patrol agents, police officers and migrants — is considered serious enough that military planners have issued warnings to Army commanders.

[T]he military is concerned about the arrival of “unregulated militia members self-deploying to the border in alleged support” of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“They operate under the guise of citizen patrols,” the report said, while warning of “incidents of unregulated militias stealing National Guard equipment during deployments.” The military report provided no further details about the alleged thefts.

Several landowners in the area said they do not want the militias around.

Michael Vickers, a veterinarian and rancher who lives an hour north of the border in Falfurrias, said that he will not let militia members from outside the area onto his property and that he doubts most area landowners would trust outsiders.

“I will not let militia on my land,” [Lucy] Kruse said. “They’re civilians stepping into a situation where the Border Patrol is supposed to be in control and make decisions. They could damage property or harm workers. I would guess they would be trigger-happy. If they shot someone, they might just say the person they shot was reaching for a gun.”

“The militia just needs to stay where they are,” said Metz, a Republican. “We don’t need fanatical people. We don’t need anybody here with guns. Why do they have guns? I have dealt with illegals for 30 years, and all of them have been scared, asking for help. The militias need to stay up north where they belong. We have no use for them here. They might shoot someone or hurt someone.”

Poll: Majority of White Evangelicals Admit to Being Racists

I have long argued that there is a very large overlap between white supremacists and white evangelical Christians.  In the case of Southern Baptists, one need only look at the denomination's history - i.e., it was formed because of its member churches' support for the continuation of slavery - to grasp that this is a racist denomination.  As for the pretend "family values" organizations like Family Research Council, Traditional Values Coalition, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America and The Family Foundation here in Virginia - they are mostly lily white organizations that support anti-minority Republican policies. Now, we have a Public Religion Research Institute survey - the 9th annual American Values Survey - that confirms that white evangelical Christians are anti-immigrant, support horrible family separations for immigrants and are anti-racial diversity.  They have turned Christ into a "White Jesus" and pretty much have a "fuck everyone else" attitude towards anyone who is different be they poor, elderly, refugees or children.  Indeed, they are exhibit 1 as to why one would not want to be considered a "Christian."  Here are highlights from Christian Post:

White evangelical protestants are the only religious demographic in the United States in which the majority views immigrants as a "threat" to American values and sees the country's increasing racial diversity as a bad thing, a new survey has found.

A little over a week before the 2018 midterm elections, the Public Religion Research Institute on Monday released its 9th annual American Values Survey.

The research shows that white evangelical Protestants are at odds with all other identified religious groups on many questions relating to immigration, race, the #MeToo movement and President Donald Trump.

The survey featured responses from 2,509 adults (338 self-identified white evangelical Protestants) across 50 states and contained a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.

While a majority of all other religious demographics have unfavorable views of President Donald Trump, 68 percent of white evangelicals hold a favorable view of the Republican president. Meanwhile, 80 percent of black Protestants, 75 percent of religiously unaffiliated, 74 percent of Hispanic Catholics, 73 percent of non-Christian religious Americans, 52 percent of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics hold a negative opinion of Trump.

As data shows that the U.S. will become a minority white nation by the year 2045, the survey asked respondents whether or not the nation's ethnic and racial "realignment" is positive or a negative thing.

The majority of all major religious demographics surveyed said they see the realignment as positive thing except for white evangelicals. Fifty-four percent of white evangelicals surveyed said they see the U.S. becoming majority non-white as a mostly negative trend.

By comparison, 81 percent of Hispanic Catholics, 80 percent of black Protestants, 51 percent of white Catholics and white mainline Protestants see the trend as mostly positive.

When asked about the growing number of "newcomers" to the United States, white evangelicals (57 percent) were the only major religious group to have a majority say that immigrants "threaten traditional American customs and values." PRRI also found that although most Americans oppose a hypothetical law to ban refugees around the world from being able to come to the United States, about half of white evangelicals (51 percent) would support such a law. The data also finds that white evangelicals were the group least likely to oppose a policy of separating immigrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. "When you look at the [PRRI] report, [marriage and abortion] are a very low priority for Republicans and for white evangelicals. The real key to understanding white evangelicals is through their anti-immigrant attitudes and fear of demographic change," Wong explained. "They are the group that is most conservative on the travel ban. They are also the most conservative of family separation, which to many people is a moral issue."

"They are also the only religious group to contend that immigrants threaten American values," she added. "It is really this potent mix of nativism and racial anxiety and white Christian nationalism that underlines many of the other policy attitudes that you see presented in this report."

While 69 percent of Americans feel that Trump has "damaged the dignity of the presidency," White evangelicals are the only religious group to have a majority (53 percent) that says that Trump has not "damaged the dignity of the presidency."

"Why do they stick with Trump?" Wong asked during the panel. "Because Trump's immigration agenda is the white evangelical immigration agenda. I think that has become very clear."

I have long viewed evangelical Christians as total hypocrites and this survey adds basis for view these modern day Pharisees negatively.  They simply are NOT nice or decent people. They are as morally bankrupt as Trump himself.

Trump’s America Is Not a Safe Place for Jews - or Those Labeled as "Other"

A column in the Washington Post laments that America is quickly becoming a place that is not safe for Jews thanks to the growing anti-Semiticism made normal by the occupant of the White House.  The piece recounts the ways in which Trump has embraced the Alt-Right which has long targeted Jews along with pretty much all minorities as well as LGBT Americans.  It's a trend that reminds one of the rise of dictators in Europe in the late 1920's and early 1930's not to mention the white nationalists who are seeking to reassert their power in places as disparate as rural areas of the United Kingdom supporting Brexit, to Hungary and Brazil where an extremist just won the presidency.  The trend throughout is the dehumanizing of those who are perceived as different which in turn opens the door for violence against those targeted.  Disgustingly, here in America, Trump and far right Republicans disclaim any responsibility for the hatred they are unleashing.  Here are column highlights:

George Washington, in his 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., told Jews they would be safe in the new nation.

“The government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” he wrote. “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Though that assurance has been tested, the United States has endured as a safe haven for Jews.

Now President Trump has violated Washington’s compact. He has given sanction to bigotry and assistance to persecution. After the shooting in Pittsburgh, which the Anti-Defamation League believes is the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, there is no longer safety under the vine and fig tree.

I had been dreading and expecting this day, and more like it, for two years. This was more than predictable; it was predicted.

After Trump’s presidential campaign began with genteel anti-Semitism, progressed to dog whistles and ended with a full-throated targeting of Jewish “globalists,” I wrote on Election Day that the results would be coming in on the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the infamous night of Nazi violence and vandalism against German Jews: “I pray that on this solemn anniversary, Americans tell Donald Trump and the world that we are never going back there.”

After Charlottesville, when Trump said there “were very fine people” marching among the neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us,” I wrote about my daughter’s fear of returning to Hebrew school because of violence; armed white supremacists had chanted “Sieg Heil” and forced worshipers to flee a Charlottesville synagogue.

Consider some of the many times Trump gave sanction to bigotry before 11 worshipers were shot dead at the Tree of Life:

Telling Jewish Republicans they wouldn’t support him “because I don’t want your money.”

Tweeting an image from an anti-Semitic message board with a Star of David atop a pile of cash.

Saying “I don’t have a message” for supporters who threatened anti-Semitic violence against a Jewish journalist, and Melania Trump saying the writer “provoked” the threats.
Branding his campaign with the “America First” slogan of the anti-Semitic pre-war movement.

Alleging that “blood suckers” and “a global power structure” including “international banks” are secretly plotting against ordinary Americans.

And, when urged by the Anti-Defamation League to stop using traditionally anti-Semitic tropes, repeating the tropes in an ad with images of prominent Jews, including George Soros.

Once in office, in addition to making common cause with the Nazis of Charlottesville, Trump stocked his administration with Stephen K. Bannon and other figures of the nationalist “alt-right;” hesitated to condemn the rise of anti-Semitic threats and vandalism; issued a Holocaust remembrance statement without mention of Jews; lamented the attempts to silence Alex Jones, who peddles anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; and, declaring himself a “nationalist,” increased verbal attacks on “globalists,” particularly Soros.

Whatever Trump’s motives, his words and deeds inspire the hateful and the violent. The man accused of sending pipe bombs to a dozen favorite Trump targets (including Soros) eschewed politics, his family’s lawyer says, until he “found a father in Trump.” The accused Pittsburgh gunman, though apparently rejecting Trump for being insufficiently nationalist, embraced on social media the themes Trump has popularized: the “globalist” danger, immigrant “invaders that kill our people” and an “infestation” of undesirables.

[P]roceeding with a rally mere hours after the massacre, he galvanized the crowd with the same complaint the alleged Pittsburgh killer cited in social media before the carnage: the migrant caravan. Trump told the crowd, “No caravans, right? We don’t want caravans. We’re not having caravans.”  “Build the wall!” the crowd chanted.

Be very afraid.

The Struggle to Track Rising Extremism

Click image to enlarge.

Organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center ("SPLC") and the Anti-defamation League are working overtime trying to track the rising extremism gripping America which is being fanned daily by Donald Trump and many within the GOP who have given license to extremists.  What was once dog whistle messaging has now been replaced by open racism and the open dissemination of hate. And it is not just Neo-Nazis and white supremacists who are marketing hatred.   In Virginia alone, SPLC identifies 37 active hate organizations that range from white Nationalists, anti-immigrant extremists and anti-LGBT extremists (go to the SPLC site and check out your state).  With the advent of the Internet and social media, the venues for spewing and fueling hatred and organizing acts of violence has exploded.  A piece in The New Yorker looks at the growing difficulty is tracking extremism and warning law enforcement of the growing threats.  Here are highlights:

Heidi Beirich has worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center for almost two decades. She oversees the organization’s yearly tally of “hate and hard-line, anti-government” groups. On Saturday, she was at the airport in Montgomery, Alabama—she was flying to New Orleans, where the S.P.L.C. is having its board meeting—when she saw a CNN report about the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

“My first thought was, Oh God, this could be one of ours,” she told me by phone Saturday afternoon. The S.P.L.C. maintains an enormous database of extremists and extremist groups. When acts of violence and domestic terror take place, the group runs the suspects’ names against its database to see if there’s a match. If there is, they take that information to law enforcement, and share it with reporters and the public.

I asked Beirich for her thoughts on the news coverage of acts of mass violence, and the debate over the merits of broadcasting perpetrators’ beliefs. “I understand the argument: don’t give these people too much ink, or airtime, because you’re just spreading the propaganda,” she said. “But the truth is these people are committing so much violence, and their ideas are actually influencing public policy—the Muslim ban, the immigration stuff thats going on—I don’t think you can ignore it.”

Even for Beirich and her team, who study the nexus of hate and violence professionally, this week—with the pipe bombs mailed to prominent Democrats, and the deliberate shooting of two black people by a white man in Kentucky—was overwhelming.

But it hasn’t been just the past week—it’s been the past few years. Hate crimes increased in both 2015 and 2016, according to the latest F.B.I. data, and the Anti-Defamation League says that anti-Semitic incidents spiked in 2017. . . . The F.B.I.’s data may not even be the full picture, she pointed out, saying, “Not every state has a hate-crime law, many that do don’t cover the L.G.B.T. population, and there’s no training for law enforcement.”

The suspect in the Pittsburgh shooting was identified on Saturday as Robert Bowers. He killed at least ten people before being arrested. He wasn’t in the S.P.L.C.’s system. “I’m not that surprised,” she said. “We try to collect everything we can about white supremacists, but this is a huge world.” Beirich’s team found Bowers’s posts on Gab, a social network popular with white nationalists and the alt-right.  “Gab, where this guy was posting, is, like, four hundred thousand people,” Beirich told me. “We don’t have information on four hundred thousand people.”

The manias of mass murderers are always particular. But the massacres in Pittsburgh and Jeffersontown—and the pipe bombs sent to a dozen Democratic leaders this week, allegedly by the Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc—share some obvious common causes. They are the toxic politics of the President, and the racist, nationalist fervor that has been inflamed by his rise, and the success and the militancy of the gun lobby, which for decades has refused to acknowledge the obvious: that one way to have fewer killings is to make it harder for Americans to possess guns. Each of these is a national crisis on its own.

What should be plain now is that each crisis is escalating, as is the frequency of political violence. Trump, asked about the Pittsburgh shooting, said, “If they had protection inside, the results would have been far better.” The moral inadequacy is vast. Murderous acts of hate have occurred, on a national scale, several times this week. It is a tragedy that [Trump] the President is not able to see them for what they are.

Corey Stewart, Scott Taylor, et al: Foul Things that Crawled Out from Under Trump’s Rock

Corey Stewart - an open racist and Neo-Confederate.

Scott Taylor - a man who refuses to condemn Corey Stewart  or disavow Donald Trump. 

The depths of the depravity of today's Republican Party seemingly know no limit.  At the national level, we see the amoral, sexual predator-in-chief at the White House lying multiple times a day and doing his upmost to destroy the Western alliance to please his puppet master in the Kremlin.  Here in Virginia we have the equally amoral and dishonest Corey Stewart, the GOP candidate for the U. S. Senate seat held by Tim Kaine, a morally decent man I know personally. Of course, both Der Trumpenführer and Stewart count evangelical Christians - using the term "Christian" very loosely -  as their strongest adherence.  It's amazing how racism and bigotry trump the message of the New Testament with these modern day Pharisees (no offense to the biblical Pharisees who were decent and upstanding in comparison).  A piece in the Washington Post looks at what a toxic cesspool the GOP has become under Trump, Pence and their Satan's spawn in races across America.  Here are column highlights (Note the reference to GOP 2nd District congressman Scott Taylor):

Behold, a new breed of Republican for the Trump era.

Seth Grossman won the Republican primary last month for a competitive House seat in New Jersey, running on the message “Support Trump/Make America Great Again.” The National Republican Congressional Committee endorsed him.

Then, a video surfaced, courtesy of American Bridge, a Democratic PAC, of Grossman saying “the whole idea of diversity is a bunch of crap.” Grossman then proclaimed diversity “evil.” CNN uncovered previous instances of Grossman calling Kwanzaa a “phony holiday” created by “black racists,” labeling Islam a cancer and saying faithful Muslims cannot be good Americans. . . . And this week, the liberal group Media Matters found that Grossman had previously posted a link on Facebook to a white-nationalist website’s piece claiming black people “are a threat to all who cross their paths.”  After weeks of delay, the NRCC finally withdrew its nomination.

Many such characters have crawled out from under rocks and onto Republican ballots in 2018: A candidate with ties to white nationalists is the GOP Senate nominee in Virginia (and has President Trump’s endorsement); an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier is the Republican candidate in a California House race; a prominent neo-Nazi won the GOP nomination in an Illinois House race; and overt racists are in Republican primaries across the country.

It is an indication of where Trump has taken the party that Republicans need the support of people like this.  By [Trump’s] the president’s own standard, it is fair to identify these candidates with the national Republican brand. . . . . many have been inspired or emboldened by him. Corey A. Stewart, the Republican Senate nominee in Virginia, said he was “Trump before Trump.”

The party won’t back Stewart, but Republican lawmakers are tiptoeing. Rep. Scott W. Taylor (R-Va.), declining to disavow Stewart, noted to the Virginian-Pilot newspaper that people won’t see him as racist because “my son is named after a black guy.”

In California, the Republican facing Democratic Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, John Fitzgerald, has appeared on neo-Nazi podcasts, claimed the Holocaust is a lie and alleged an international Jewish conspiracy. In Illinois, the Republican nominee against Democratic Rep. Daniel Lipinski, Arthur Jones, has a campaign website that mixes anti-Semitic propaganda and support for Trump, and has pictures of him speaking at a neo-Nazi rally for Trump in 2016 and making a Nazi salute with other “white patriots.”

Russell Walker, Republican nominee for a North Carolina state House seat, is a white supremacist whose personal website is “littered with the n-word” and states that Jews are “satanic,” Vox reports.

Running in the Republican primary for Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s congressional seat in Wisconsin is Paul Nehlen, who calls himself “pro-white” and was booted from Twitter for racism.

Neo-Nazi Patrick Little ran as a Republican in the California Senate primary, blaming his loss on fraud by “Jewish supremacists,” according to the website Right Wing Watch.

In North Carolina, nominee Mark Harris, in the NRCC’s “Young Guns” program for top recruits, has suggested that women who pursue careers and independence do not “live out and fulfill God’s design.”

The Kansas GOP asked state Sen. Steve Fitzgerald, a Republican congressional candidate, not to repeat his claim that Planned Parenthood is worse than the Nazi death camp Dachau. Fitzgerald did it anyway — and also declared that “outside of Western civilization, there is only barbarism.”

What makes so many think such exotic views are welcome?

Maybe they see the wife of former Fox News executive Bill Shine defending racists on Twitter. Her account was deleted when her husband became Trump’s deputy chief of staff for communications.

Or maybe they see David Bossie, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager, telling a black man on TV that “you’re out of your cotton-picking mind” — and then returning after a brief suspension and apology.

Or perhaps they see Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) retweeting a Nazi sympathizer, refusing to delete it and saying he doesn’t want Somali Muslims working at a meatpacking plant in his district because they think people go “to hell for eating pork chops.”

Is it any wonder the likes of Seth Grossman think this party is theirs?

Again, note how 2nd district congressman Scott Taylor will not denounce Corey Stewart's blatant racism.  Rather he gives the laughable excuse about his son's name - Sterling - is allegedly after a black man.  As a piece in The Root notes, "whether or not your son is named after a black man has absolutely no bearing on whether or not you are a supporter of white supremacy and white nationalism."